Black Hat SEO Tactics To Avoid

Hello. My name is Emma North, and I’m a digital marketing executive here at Koozai. Today, I’d like to talk to you a little bit about some black hat techniques that you absolutely must avoid. Now these are the sorts of things that used to be commonplace and perfectly acceptable ways to achieve search engine optimisation, but that’s not the case anymore. With recent Google algorithm updates, such as Penguin and Panda, these are the sorts of activities that will be penalised with a ranking penalty.

So first of all, we’ve got paid links. If you’ve ever paid for a link to appear on someone’s site, linking back to your own site, then you should get these removed. They appear very unnatural to Google, and you’re likely to suffer a ranking penalty if you haven’t already. If you haven’t already, that doesn’t mean that you won’t have one in the future. So it’s important to get these removed as soon as possible.

Generic directories, similarly these are very unnatural to Google. They are pages full of links to other sites, and if you’ve got a link there, Google will see that as an unnatural attempt to game the rankings. Google holds you responsible for the inbound links to your site. So it’s important you review the link profile as a whole and identify any links that could be considered unnatural and get those removed. Contact the site owners. Do anything you can to get them removed.

If you can’t do that, and you’ve made every effort to get them removed, there is now on Google a disavow tool that you can use, but you do need evidence you’ve tried to remove the links yourself. Google disavow tool basically says to Google, “Don’t take these links into consideration when you’re ranking my site.” So try to get them removed on your own, and then if you’ve got evidence that you tried and that didn’t work, try the Google disavow tool. But get these sorts of unnatural links removed at all costs. Generally with links, if it looks like a bad neighbourhood, it probably is, and you don’t want to be there.

Next, we’ve got cloaking and more specifically hidden content. Cloaking is a technique where you hide content from the user that is just specifically for the search engines. You’re trying to game the rankings by telling the search engines one thing about your site, when, in fact, it’s really not about that. Hidden content, in particular, Google is very clever now at finding this. If you’ve got content written into the script that’s not on page and is hidden from the user, Google will identify that, and you may suffer a ranking penalty as a result of the Google Panda update. It’s important the content on the whole of your site is written for the user. It needs to be informative, and it needs to be on page. Don’t have any hidden content in the script of your site. If you’ve got it, get it removed.

Next, we’ve got keyword stuffing. Now, it’s essential that you have some keywords on your site for the user as well as the search engines. But it is important that your content isn’t littered with them. Make sure that the content is written for the user, that it makes sense and reads well, and the rest will follow. In the long run, that will be rewarded. Anything that’s littered with keywords is not going to rank in the long term because you may get hit with a ranking penalty as a result of the Panda update.

Similarly, Meta keyword tags; every page can still have a Meta keyword tag, but they’re not really used by Google anymore. That’s not to say they won’t in the future, but other search engines do use them. So don’t stuff them full of dozens or hundreds keywords, just half a dozen relevant keywords is more than enough for each page to ensure that you’re targeting the right keywords for those search engines.

Last thing we’ve got doorway pages. These are not used so much anymore, but there are still people out there who will tell you can get benefit from them. Similar to cloaking, this is a technique used to hide content from the user. It’s a page designed specifically for Google. So they’re usually stuffed full of keywords. Google will suss out what you’re doing if you try to use these pages. Don’t do it. If you’re using any of these pages that are designed only for the search engines and they’re full of keywords, get rid of them. It’s not going to serve you any benefit in the long run.

So that’s a few black hat techniques on the surface. Now that list isn’t by any means conclusive. There are hundreds of techniques people use to try and game the system. I guess the rule of thumb is write for the user. Don’t try to do anything to game Google because the quick wins won’t be worth it in the long run, and you will suffer a ranking penalty if you get caught. White hat techniques are the way to achieve natural rankings, and continue doing that will mean you will continue staying in the rankings and Google will continue to value your site.

Thanks very much for watching. If you want to find out more about Koozai, please interact with the social media buttons after this video, and thank you for watching.